PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #16: Fire Ecology.
Tuesday, August 7, 2001. Presentation from 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM. Exhibition Hall
152
Spatial models of fire severity for study design and landscape analysis.
HAIRE, SANDRA1, KOTLIAR, NATASHA1, KEY, CARL1, 1
ABSTRACT- Understanding the dynamics of fire in relation to landscape structure and function is a fascinating part of "Preserving, Restoring, and Sustaining Complex Ecosystems". Effects of fire on wildlife communities may result from variation in fire-severity patterns and resulting landscape heterogeneity. Burn severity indices derived from remotely sensed data offer a valuable source of information for site selection and sampling design, as well as for landscape analysis of fire effects on plant and animal communities. We used burn severity models developed from Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) and Enhanced Thematic Mapper (ETM) imagery to identify and quantify landscape characteristics including patch size of different severity levels, burn severity patch context, and the spatial configuration of patches. We identified several limitations of using the TM/ETM burn severity models for study design that are related to temporal factors; image date relative to fire activity, variations in precipitation during and after the fire season, and changes in reflectance characteristics of different cover types through time. However, spatial burn severity models provided important baseline information that enabled us to define landscape types for sampling wildlife and plant communities, including landscapes created by large, wind-driven crown fires and those composed of mosaics of moderate-severity burns.
KEY WORDS: fire severity, spatial models, study design